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Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Kamala Harris’s move to VP leaves the Senate with zero Black women, Australia debates the ‘manterruption,’ and Anne Boden is not your average fintech entrepreneur. Have a thoughtful Thursday.
– ‘I was prepared to fail.’ Anne Boden knows she is not who you imagine when you think of a fintech entrepreneur.
“I’m a woman. I’m 5ft tall. I’m Welsh. I’m middle-aged. I’m from a very ordinary background and I’m the sort of person who’ll chat to somebody in the ladies [room]!” she says.
But that didn’t stop her. “I’d reached the stage where I was prepared to fail,” she says. “I was 54 and confident enough not to care if somebody said I was stupid.”
Boden founded Starling, the branchless U.K. bank that now has 1.8 million customer accounts and a staff of more than 1,000. She recently talked to the Guardian about her startup journey, and it’s the sort of second-act story that will stick with you.
She started her corporate career at Lloyds in London and later became COO of Allied Irish Banks. The 2008 financial crisis changed her perspective on banking. Even with the Great Recession and technological advances, banks kept operating in the same way; it was business as usual.
She left her job in 2014 to launch a new kind of bank; one without bureaucracy, where opening an account was easy, notifications were instant, and customer service was always available. She spent months trying to drum up support for her vision. She found a business partner, but later lost him and other members of their fledgling team. Her breakthrough came in late 2015 when she convinced billionaire Harald McPike to invest 48 million pounds in her business. Starling got its banking license in 2016.
Boden admits that the bank is her whole life and embraces the fact that she’s bucked the expectations society set for her. “I’ve had a great career. I’ve done lots of stuff. I’m proud of what we’ve built,” she says. “I wish I could help more women understand that you don’t have to conform to the stereotype to be happy, to be successful.”
You can read the entire story here.
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Step back for the Senate. Kamala Harris's ascension to the White House comes with an unfortunate side effect: there will now be zero Black women in the Senate. Experts in this story explain why parties have failed to help elect women of color to statewide office and what the prospects are to change that: Fortune
- Manterrupting moment. The concept of "manterrupting" is having a moment in Australia after Prime Minister Scott Morrison talked over Anne Ruston, the minister for families and social services, after she was asked what it was like to be a woman in Parliament. The video is going viral. New York Times
- Speed up, s'il vous plaît. In France, asset managers are demanding that the country's biggest companies appoint women to top positions. The investors want businesses to ensure women make up 30% of their executive teams by 2025. Financial Times
- Don't bank on it. Christine Lagarde offers a dose of reality: a vaccine won't mean the end of the global economic crisis. The European Central Bank president says that the economic impact of an immunization will likely take much longer to appear than the vaccine itself. CNBC
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Kate Spade hired former Tinder CMO Jenny Campbell in the same role.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Selling a stake. For the first time in the Louis-Dreyfus Company's 169-year history, the business has sold a significant stake to a non-family shareholder. Abu Dhabi state-owned holding company ADQ will hold a 45% stake, agreed heiress Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, who bought out her other family members. Financial Times
- End period poverty. In China, students and teachers are handing out menstrual pads at school as part of a grassroots campaign to "stop period shaming." Activists are trying to end period poverty and make menstrual products accessible to low-income girls. New York Times
- Deportations in Georgia. Some of the migrant women who suffered gynecological procedures, like hysterectomies, that they didn't need or consent to at a Georgia Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility are now being deported. NBC News
ON MY RADAR
What will Jill Biden wear in the White House? Vogue
H&M taps Diane Von Furstenberg for home wares collection WWD
Elizabeth Warren: What a Biden-Harris administration should prioritize on its first day Washington Post
PARTING WORDS
"I’m going thrift shopping tomorrow. Should I do a fashion show?"
- Newly elected Congresswoman Cori Bush on how her plans for assembling a Capitol Hill wardrobe. Other Congresswomen chimed in with affordable fashion tips.
